If You Get Pulled Over, Don’t Flash a Bogus Badge

“Do you know who I am?” is the well-worn phrase that people who think they’re important use when confronted with hurdles like being pulled over by a cop, or a big long line. In today’s Gazette, I read about a former selectman who tried the same thing when he was pulled over for speeding on Route 9 this month.

David Moskin waved a badge ‘vigorously’ out the drivers-side window as the patrol officer sat writing his ticket. He says now that he was trying to show that ‘he was a local,’ but to the police officials this smells like ‘do you know who I am?” It reminds me of those stickers people post on their rear windows, proclaiming how they support their local troopers. Hey, anything is worth a shot I guess.

Now the town of Hadley is looking into all of those badges they gave out to former police commissioners, the purpose of which they are hard-pressed to explain. When Moskin was pulled over for doing 44 in a 30-mile-an-hour zone, he told the officer a former board member said to show that badge if he was ever pulled over. Oops. The cop seized the badge.